A Redemption Like No Other
by Infinite Stupidity
Summary: "They wouldn't call him Joker. Not now." Joker struggles to cope with the loss of Shepard and the Normandy. He grasps at his only chance of redemption - the Lazarus Project.
1. Chapter 1

She looked out onto the great, sparkling expanse and saw…nothing. There was nothing.

_She_ was nothing.

Pain. Pain everywhere. In her chest, behind her dulling green eyes, in the tips of her fingers and toes – searing, intense pain as if she were being dragged through a furnace.

Her head turned to stare at the wreckage, and she blinked rapidly to clear her eyes.

_This is it. _

She didn't think it would end like this – not now, not after everything she had accomplished, after the battles she had fought.

This…to die like this…was insulting. Embarrassing. Degrading. And, if she was being honest with herself, a little disappointing.

Commander Shepard. The greatest war hero in human history, renowned for her tactical and combat skills that saved her squad on Elysium from impossible odds. Defeater of Saren, one of the greatest threats to all sapient life. Saviour of the Citadel, the first human Spectre!

She had seen it all. She had uncovered the murky truth of the Protheans, shattered the mysteries and speculations, the theories and explanations that professors and scientists had been shoving down the universe's throats for hundreds of years. She was a living legend – known in every household across the galaxy.

The woman who could save the universe with nothing but a pistol and two close friends.

The woman who was as likely to hug you as she was to shoot you.

Humans say that in the moments before death, they experience their life flashing before their eyes, a reminder of all the regrets they had, unfulfilled promises, experiences yet to happen. Shepard didn't see that.

Shepard saw her team standing on the bridge, arguing over who would take the photo. She saw Joker trying to convince Tali Z'orrah to remove her helmet, waving credits in her direction and promising salvages beyond her wildest imagination. She saw Urdnot Wrex standing to one side, pretending not to care. The slight inclination of his great head towards the argument told her otherwise. She saw Liara T'soni and Garrus Vakarian observing the galaxy map, pointing out locations of interest: Liara was mostly attracted to the known sites of Prothean ruins, filling Garrus in on each specific planet's possible link to the great civilization. He just nodded and smiled, but Shepard could tell that he was patching into the Citadel news network through his visor. She had occasionally caught the same vacant look when they were in the debriefing, and when she confronted him about it, he had sheepishly revealed the truth. This memory was special, cherished by her. She had carefully locked it away, memorising each individual's expression.

She briefly noted the absence of one Ashley Williams, but discarded the thought quickly. No. this was a happy recollection. She had paid enough for her decision on Virmire. Now, she would die free of regrets. She had led a good, honourable life, as had Ashley.

She remembered lifting the camera and hearing cries of outrage as the flash imprinted white strips in their vision. No one had noticed their Commander sneak up to the device – an ancient camera that Shepard had insisted on using, claiming it was one of her quirkier possessions from growing up on Earth - save one. Kaidan had watched her with guarded eyes, before sharing with her a mischievous smile, letting his brown eyes smoulder seductively at her. They often shared little private exchanges like this, making the most of what they were allowed before regulations came into play.

Her team. Her friends. They were all here, together. One of the rare occasions when they were all together in the one place, enjoying the good company and the friendship that only going through hell and back together could produce. The people that knew her, as in really _knew_ her. They knew how far she pushed herself, how little luxury she allowed herself, how intensely she felt for her friends; how intensely she felt for Kaidan. She suspected now, that perhaps they hadn't been as secretive as she would have liked. Shepard never had been one for secrecy anyway: she had always very much been an open and honest what-you-see-is-what-you-get type of person. It made her both an easily trusted ally and an intimidating opponent.

The unsinkable Commander Shepard. Holding onto the shade of a memory, refusing to succumb to the shuddering, biting ice that grabbed at her, refusing to give in when resistance was futile. Because that was the story of her life. She never gave up – especially not when she stared death in the face. She had proved that many times over now.

And here she was; suffocating as her lungs slowly dragged in what little air the ruptured oxygen tubes would allow into her helmet. She had always expected to go out with a gun in her hand and a team at her back, taking out as many Reapers as she could – doing her part for humanity.

Instead, here she was, her gun holstered, hands scrabbling at the tubing at her neck in a desperate attempt to stem the pressurised gas leak, with nothing at her back bar that flaming twisted lump of metal that had once been her Normandy, and that damn hunk of rock that had not only blown her life apart, but had also stuck around to enjoy the fireworks.

Shepard couldn't decide whether to be insulted at the obvious gloating, or impressed at the quads they had, knowing full well half the Alliance fleet would be here soon.

And as she began to feel a slight warmth from her re-entry into the atmosphere of whatever blasted planet she had been shooting probes into not twenty minutes before, the tanks in her suit finally emptied into the cold vacuum that pressed down on her. As she stole her final gasps of air, Commander Shepard died alone.

….

Silence reigned. A dark, pressing silence that defiantly roared in the ears of all present. They watched in silence. They wept in silence.

Gone.

It was gone.

She was gone.

Jeff let out a cry of infuriated desperation. Nobody heard him. Nobody was there to stop him as he threw himself against the opposite wall of the pod. Nobody was there to wince in empathy as his ribs let out a sharp crack and his wrist snapped. Nobody was there to console him at the death of his best friend.

"It wasn't your fault, Jeff."

They wouldn't call him Joker. Not now.

But nobody was there. Because he had stayed behind while everyone else had done the right thing. He had tried to throw away his life because he couldn't let go of his pride. And he knew that she would come for him, but he thought he could convince her.

Now she was dead.

And no matter what they said, they would lie to him. They would falsify everything in order to make him feel better about himself. They would lie. Because it was all his fault. He didn't deserve to feel better about himself. He wanted to feel the pain, the self-loathing, the punishment that came with his crime.

Her face swam before his eyes, features set into hard, determined lines as she smashed a fist into the launch controls. His cry of "Nooo!" and the sickness in the pit of his stomach, the shakes and tremors that wracked his body as the pod rode the sudden burst of fiery power. The knowledge that Shepard had thrown him into the pod and given up her own life because he had been so fucking stupid enough to think that he could save a ship with no engines and half of its innards exposed the vacuum of space. The knowledge that he had just witnessed his closest friend either being cooked to death inside her armour, any kinetic shields incinerated by the explosion, or he had just watched her being spaced. There was no way her suit could have survived that magnitude of power that had been caused by the fuel igniting, if the vapour- like ball of flames that continued to blaze even now was anything to go by.

He whimpered, pain coursing through his body.

Jeff did not cry. Flight Academy had taught him what happened to pussies. Instead, he curled up on the floor of the pod, trying to ignore the needling sensation in his side and the deadening of his arm. He had likely trapped a vein with the break.

He couldn't guess how long he lay there for, but when he finally managed to pull himself up into a sitting position and glance out of the reinforced window, the planet they had been orbiting was now several times smaller than before. He tried to find any signs of the wreckage, but either it had crashed into the planet due to the high gravity, or he could no longer distinguish the flames from any other star.

Jeff pulled himself up to the console and activated the beacon.

Almost immediately, he received radio contact.

"Hello? Come in, this is Lieutenant Alenko of the 5th Fleet, come in, is that you, Commander?"

Jeff hung his head in shame. Despite his earlier refusal, his eyes dampened. He cleared his throat, mouth dry.

"Kaidan. Its me."

"Joker? Are you all right? Where the hell is Shepard? We didn't see your pod leave. Tell me she's with you!" Jeff squeezed his eyes shut, white spots invading the cool black behind his eyelids. His tone…it was so desperate. He couldn't tell him. How could he face the shame, the accusing stares, the disappointment that he would receive? He wronged Shepard. He hadn't meant to, he had thought she would leave him once he proved that he could handle it. How wrong he was.

How selfish he was.

"Kaidan, I-I'm sorry. I'm so sorry…"

Silence. Silence reigned with a firm hand, beating down any voice he tried to give his thoughts. He let a few tears roll down his cheek and into his scrubby beard.

She was gone.

It was all his fault.


	2. Chapter 2

She wanted to reach out and snatch him up, hide him away, protect him from the anguish and pain boiling in his dark eyes. Shield him from the all-consuming darkness that threatened to engulf them all.

He looked so vulnerable…weak. Something that she had never associated with the Lieutenant. He was always someone to look up to. Someone to model yourself after. His self-control was admirable, and well known amongst the crew. Liara had never experienced this side to him.

She was unsure as to whether her sudden maternal instincts were acceptable within human society. She had never been one for crowds, and even after spending a three month long tour on a human ship, she still held on to her reservations. Spending most of her time behind the med bay meant that she did not interact with the rest of the crew as well as Commander Shepard would have liked…

Shepard. The woman upon whose life hinged the survival of the galaxy.

The galaxy was doomed.

….….

His brain was a fiery white noise of entangled emotions and thought. Every time he tried to straighten one thread out, it snapped back into the knot of convulsing thought processes, lost once more in the inferno. He tried grasping at the threads, at _anything_, hoping that something would stick and make sense and pull him out of this thought coma. Each time he tried, he got burned.

He learned quickly that not thinking at all, not trying to sort out the mess that was his head, seemed to work best for him and those around him.

Kaidan had become…not as gentle as he had once been.

It pained him to see Liara shy away from him when he entered the room, or to see Tali turn her back to him. It angered him how Garrus had taken to "conveniently" finding him when both Kaidan and Joker's down time coincided. It had downright pissed him off when Joker had attempted to apologize for killing her.

_Shepard._

His Shepard. The woman he had loved.

And Joker, through all his stupidity and stubbornness, had killed her. Worse still, he had actually come to Kaidan at his post next to Admiral Hackett's office, hobbling on those freaky little legs, and tried to tell him that he was _sorry_. That he hadn't _meant _it. That he, of all people, should understand Shepard's hero complex.

Kaidan's hand curled into a fist, clenching tightly, tendons popping in his neck as he bit down on the inside of his cheek. What he had wanted to do was scream in his face. What he had wanted to do was break every pathetic little bone in the crippled pilot's body. What he had deserved to do was remind Joker every minute of every single day for the rest of his life, that their Commander Shepard was _dead_ and that it was all. His. Fault.

What Kaidan had loathed himself for doing, was patted Joker once on the shoulder, perhaps a little harder than necessary, and retreated to the safety of his room on the other side of the military accommodations. His very soul screamed in outrage as he denied himself the revenge and justice he felt entitled to on behalf of Shepard. He knew the wet, destructive pleasure would have been short lived, but he didn't care. He was dying inside. He needed some sort of emotion other than sheer agony to hold on to.

He had stopped himself. Because it wasn't what Shepard would have done.

As badly as he needed to release his pain on to someone, preferable the scrawny disgrace of a man who had spent most of his time here on flight simulators and at the bar, he knew in his heart that Shepard would be ashamed. She would be ashamed of his actions. Of him pursuing this hateful crime in her name.

"You are so much better than this, Kaidan." She would say. "You deserve so much more than this. Don't let this destroy you. Don't let it destroy who you are. And don't let it destroy who I was either."

He bit down on his knuckle, sobbing quietly. She was a wonderful woman. She had been kind, loyal, fair, and a good commander. She had listened to people's problems, and had worked with them to solve them even if it meant giving up her precious time, and occasionally her credits. But she was also strong. She had difficult choices to make, and none were made lightly. She had known that Virmire would be painful, and she had been right. But it was a choice she had to make. Kaidan still wasn't sure if she had chosen correctly.

Would Ashley have left Shepard the way he did? Or would she, in her stubbornness, push Shepard into the nearest pod?

Kaidan cursed his very soul straight to hell. How could he have abandoned her? He was sure now that Ashley would not have. If he had died on Virmire, things would have been so different. Shepard would be alive. And she would have been happy, too.

He wasn't sure that what they had had been anything other than a fling to her, but to him she was the most important thing in his life. He knew that she would have found someone to love. Hell, she found it easy enough to make everyone else fall in love with _her_. Kaidan hated the idea of her being in anyone's arms but his own. He despised the thought. It made him sick to the pit of his stomach. But if things had gone differently…had she felt even a shred of what he felt for her, he would not want her to be stuck on him or his death, refusing to even make an attempt at meeting someone. He would have expected her to move on and find a happiness that, in death, he could no longer provide – as damned hard as he might try.

As these depressing thoughts coursed their way through his mind, a sudden, shocking and guilty thought occurred to him.

He had never even learned Shepard's first name….


	3. Chapter 3

Darkstar was grungy and grimy and everything Joker was looking for in a bar. The barman nodded his acknowledgement as Joker ordered a drink with a flick of his hand. Nothing was said here – the music was too loud and the bass too heavy for anyone to understand each other. This was a place to forget. Flux was too much of a casino, and Purgatory – despite the connotations of the name – was far too upscale for him. Too nice. He needed somewhere he could go to get shit faced without being judged by patrons or harassed by security. Darkstar offered a reprieve from both.

He swirled the glass of liquor slowly, staring deep into the bottom of the clear blue liquid. Grounded. Anderson, _Anderson_, had been the one to remove his badge and revoke his rights to the Normandy. Of all the people in the world, it had been the one man that had supported Shepard and her crew through all of the crap that had happened with Saren, and he had been the only man who had believed the truth. Now though…

Joker took a swig, gritting his teeth at the fiery trail that the alcohol burned down his throat. He questioned Shepard's decision to promote Anderson to the role Councillor. Of course, not that Udina would have acted any better – worse, even – but they'd have expected it from him. This…this was like Anderson had offered a hug and then slipped an icy dagger between his shoulder blades, crooning a sweet tune of sympathy and compassion as he did so.

_Anderson is a traitor._

Joker could almost imagine Shepard's face, disgusted and hurt, had she known what her old mentor had been up to since –

His train of thought choked and cut off abruptly, and he waved the bartender over once more, motioning for the large source of the small drinks. The bartender gave him a once over, probably judging whether or not Joker would have sufficient funds on his person to cover the tab that he was planning on racking up. Giving a nod of satisfaction, the turian reached below the counter and handed Joker a large blue drinks tube. Joker laughed slightly at the strange packaging. He admitted that he was used to the tubes, but still found it bemusing even now. Growing up on the Arcturus Station meant that human customs had surrounded him. As far as he was aware, humans still preferred glass bottles to the recyclable plastic tubes that the other species favoured. He studied the container with a slight grin as he made his way slowly to a table in the corner, settling deeply into the most comfortable looking chair he could find.

_Might as well get comfy, don't think I'll be doing much walking with how heavily intoxicated I'm planning on getting._

Heaving a deep sigh, he closed his eyes and took another sip of his drink, rubbing his weary, circled eyes with a fist. He hadn't been sleeping well since…well.

He took another drink.

It had become his custom in recent months to frequent bars and questionable establishments when his thoughts got a little too close to memories he had worked hard at locking up. It was not something Chakwas approved with, but he didn't care. He valued her friendship and trust, but she wasn't his mother. Despite how much she acted like it sometimes.

Chakwas. He smiled fondly at the thought of his friend. He couldn't call many people that word. He had never been particularly sociable, but Karin had broken down his hostility. She had to, in order to treat him. He wasn't the kind to just trust somebody, but she had stuck by him and she cared about him – and he meant him as in his personality, not just his disease or her work with him. She had been genuinely concerned for him.

He had to admit, he had started to harbour a small soft spot for the seasoned military doctor, and he had a healthy respect for her. She was a motherly woman, and seemed to have taken it upon herself to fill the role of Jeff's guardian for the past few years. She had been his physician for a couple of years before they served on the Normandy together, after she served for a short spell on the Arcturus station. Chakwas had been the only small comfort available to Jeff when he lost his mother. He had been young – twenty two – when she passed away. It was difficult for him. She had been the only person who had believed in him and his dreams of piloting where everyone else laughed at the crippled kid with deluded fantasies. Growing up with Vroliks hadn't been easy, but his mother had been his crutch. When she died…he had been a complete mess. Chakwas had picked him up and put him together again.

And somehow, here she was, still standing by him, picking him up once more and trying to put him back together. Except it wasn't working. Nothing she could do would. Joker didn't want to be fixed.

He wanted to feel this pain and guilt and suffer for his mistakes – he deserved all of it and more.

Alenko had pretended he thought otherwise. Jeff couldn't look the man in the eyes. He couldn't see the hatred that Kaidan harboured for him, or suffer the horrible, unyielding tension that lay thick between them. They had once been friends, before all of this. Of all the ways to fuck up a friendship, he was sure his methods had topped the list, landing in the You're-Going-To-Hell category. He wished that Kaidan had hit him, or screamed at him, or did something that would make Joker finally feel like other people knew of his crime. He needed to see the pain in other people, to know that he wasn't alone. He knew it was a cruel thought, but the bitter side of Jeff needed to see others in pain to know that the past few months had really happened. He had to be reassured of his guilt, so that it never left. He didn't deserve for it to fade. Certainly, if a chance for redemption ever came up he would grab it and never let go – he may want to carry the responsibility forever, but if ever there was a chance to do a little good for the horrific wrong, he couldn't let that go.

…

"Jeff."

He looked up, eyes trying desperately to focus on the owner of the voice across from him.

"Hey, this is my table! Go get your own, I don't want company. Scram!" The slight slur in his speech was not obvious, but it was there. The man sighed, shaking his head.

"Come on, Joker. You've had enough, it's time to go." He rose from the chair across from Jeff and moved around the table, placing his arms firmly around Jeff's torso. Lifting him easily, he tossed a few credits onto the bar and gingerly walked the protesting, furious man away from the club.

"Hey, who do you think you are? I can walk y'know! And I'm a grown man. Leave me to drink in peace." The man sighed again and set Joker down on a bench next to the transport hub, taking a seat beside him. Joker indignantly snatched up his crutches and arranged them beside him.

"Chakwas told me where I could find you. What have you gotten yourself into, Joker?" His voice was smooth and sounded as though he was speaking through two different voice boxes at the same time, giving his voice a layered effect. Jeff squinted up into the face of the turian, trying to will the three figures he was seeing into one.

"Garrus?" Joker scowled and sunk lower on the bench, turning his face away. He had being doing his utmost to avoid the old crew since they landed on the Citadel, unwilling to face his friends.

"What do you want?"

"What do I want? I want to know why the hell you've been acting like a bum and got yourself grounded, that's what I want! You're so much better than this, and yet I find you drinking in the scummiest bar on the Citadel, off your face at three in the afternoon. I want," Garrus softened his harsh tones, "to know why my friend has dropped off the radar and hasn't made contact with me or anyone else for the past six months. Will I get an answer?" He folded his arms, looking expectantly at Jeff with those tiny reptilian eyes. Although Joker was anything but xenophobic, something about the way a turian looked at you always put him on edge. Like a predator sizing up his prey, analysing the best way to take it down.

"Depends on what you want to hear. Do you want me to tell you that I've just been partying too hard and I lost track of time, or that I've been really busy? Maybe that I'm so pissed right now because, and _only_ because, Anderson took away my badge because I wasn't performing well enough?" He pulled the brim of his hat lower. "Or would you rather hear that for the past six months I've been living my own personal hell, seeing her every time I close my eyes and even when I don't. That I've not been coping, and that I'm so pathetic, even Chakwas has been coming around less and less. _Maybe_, you want me to tell you about how, despite the fact that I still fly better than any pilot in the 5th, that because I'm such a sorry ass excuse for a human, Anderson took my badge and said to my face that he blamed me for the loss of his almost-daughter. And rightly so," He said cheerily. "because it _was_ my fault. So you realise why I haven't spoken to anyone? Because I know damn fine that no matter who I speak to, they'll never be able to get past the fact that I killed Shepard."

Garrus just kept staring at him with those blue piercing eyes, as if he were planning his next move or trying to predict Joker's. Finally, he looked away and across the emporium at the crowds.

"You know Jeff, I understand that you went through a lot, I really do. And I know that you blame yourself completely for what happened…but in the end, it was Shepard's choice. She _chose _to do what she did, and no matter how much blame and punishment you put onto yourself, you'll never be able to change that. Just think about it, okay?" Garrus stood, hesitated, and then turned back to him. "By the way, I came to say goodbye. C-Sec just doesn't do it for me now. After being with Shepard…it changes you." He smiled slightly, as if a fond memory had popped up in his head. "I want to go out there and look for bigger game. C-Sec have too much red tape. I was thinking Omega, maybe. I want to do some good in the universe. There are other ways to remember her than sitting in a bar all day, Joker. I'm going to keep her memory alive." He grinned now, confidently.

"_Always knew he could be a hero. He just needed a nudge." Shepard smiled fondly at the turian who was standing at Pressley's station, plotting coordinates. She leaned back against the side of the console, facing Joker with a mischievous grin._

"_I suppose the incentive to get his own back on a guy who made him look like an incompetent idiot helped him along this time. Always complaining about the red tape, nag, nag, nag. Honestly." She swatted him playfully on the shoulder._

"_Shush, you. He did it because he's a good person, and he knew it was the right course of action. Plus, the guy made him look like a complete fool." Joker just shook his head in amusement and adjusted their trajectory, pulling the ship clear of the debris field that was once the creepy organ man's lair._

"Hey, Garrus?" The man turned back around, a few paces away from Jeff. "She believed in you right from the start. Heard it from the woman herself, scout's honour. Just…be careful out there. Who knows, that stick up your butt might come in handy." He cracked a smile at his friend, knowing that it could have been his last goodbye he would ever say to him.

Garrus inclined his head towards Jeff, his smile bolstered by the brief flash of the old Joker, the one that he had believed gone.

As he walked away, he had a brief but shining thought:

Perhaps all was not lost.


End file.
